Monday, March 19, 2012

Sotanghon with Chicken and Wood Ear Mushrooms

One
of the great joys of cooking has to be the amazing things you learn when you
use an ingredient that is new to you. In
this case, our dear friend Richard arrived from Hong Kong recently and presented
us with a sealed plastic bag of Wood Ear or Tree Ear dried mushrooms. He brought us so many, he could have used the
bag as a neck pillow on his long flight from China. They were intriguing--almost white on one
side and then practically black on the other.
While I marveled at the sight of them, I couldn’t help wonder why
Richard had appeared with this very bulky gift.
Turns out, Richard, an avid Chewing the Fat reader, remembered something
I wrote in November 2010 in a post about Shun Lee West, our neighborhood
Chinese restaurant. http://www.chewingthefat.us.com/2010/11/long-ago-visit-to-shun-lee-and-my-take.html
is where you’ll find the post. But what
was missing from the recipe for Shun Lee’s Sichuan Shrimp were, you guessed it,
Wood Ear or Tree Tea mushrooms.

Wood Ears in their natural habitat

Truth
be told, in China, Wood Ears or Tree Teas are usually referred to, not as
mushrooms, but as “fungus”. When you
examine one, you can tell why. They look
for all the world as if they’d grown attached to something else, which indeed
they were. They are attached to tree
trunks, especially Elder, where they grow on both living and dead wood. Despite
the fact that they are grown world-wide throughout the year in temperate climates,
they’ve never achieved great popularity in the west. If you’re familiar with them at all, it is
likely as an ingredient in Hot and Sour Soup.
But even there, they are often replaced by their much more common
cousins, the shitake. In China, however,
the wood ear is still a popular culinary ingredient. And they are also used in Chinese
medicine. They’ve been proven to have
anti-tumor, hypoglycemic, anti-coagulant and cholesterol-lowering
properties. But let’s back away from the
medicine chest and head back into the kitchen.

I
have four Chinese cookbooks in my library.
I went through each one of them and, with the exception of Chef Michael
Tong (of Shun Lee West fame) whose Sichuan Shrimp recipe called for Wood Ears,
I could find nothing in any of the four except recipes for Hot and Sour Soup. I
happen to love the stuff. But I was
looking for a dinner dish so I went on an internet search. I did find several stir-fries and settled on
this one. It’s from a site called
yummly.com which rather incredibly uses “Every recipe in the World” as its tag.
That’s where I found our about Sotanghon. If the title of this recipe scared you off,
you should know that Sotanghon is vermicelli.
I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to translate something Asian into
Italian. Just doesn’t seem right to me.
Until of course I went looking for these thinner-than-angel hair noodles in my
market. I searched high and low --among
fresh pasta and dried. Only when I got to the Asian aisle did I find what I
wanted. And guess what? The package was
labelled A Taste of Thai, Vermicelli Rice Noodles. Gluten-free at that!

The
recipe is a simple stir-fry. If you’ve done one before, you know the cooking
time is nihil, it’s the prep that takes up the time. In this case, it was
an hour start to finish. You get
everything ‘mise en place’ at the start so that it all comes together very
quickly once you hit the stove. If you
keep any kind of an Asian larder, you likely have all it takes right
there. The only ingredient that may be
new to you are the Annatto Seeds. And of
course, the Wood Tree mushrooms. I’d love to tell you the Annatto is optional
but it adds so much to the dish. That a dusky, rich and earthy flavor comes
from a spice that looks for all the world like the gravel at the bottom of a
fish tank, is quite a surprise. Annatto
or Anchiote in Spanish, isn’t eaten by itself. Rather it is used to suffuse the
minimal amount of oil in this dish with a vibrant red color. It also gives off some heat, without which
this dish would be fairly bland. You can
find Annatto in the Goya section of your super markets or you can order it
on-line at www.amazon.com.

Now back to the Wood Ears. They will amaze you. They likely quintuple in size once put
through a hot water bath. They also change color and lose their black and whiteness to a rich shade of brown. It’s hard to
know how much the recommended half a cup of the things really is. I’d say two
to four would be a gracious plenty. Once
they’re soaked, cut them into long strips and follow the recipe that follows
here: Oh, and one other thing: If you can’t find Wood Ears, you can go with
dried Oyster Mushrooms which are infinitely easier to find. Here’s the recipe

2.Sauté
garlic until golden brown. Add onions and cook until transparent. Add
chicken, soy sauce and oyster sauce, season with salt and pepper and lightly
brown. Add carrots and other vegetables if using stir-fry for 15 seconds.
Remove and set aside.

3.Pour
in 1 cup of stock and bring to a soft boil. Add vermicelli noodles, pressing
them into the liquid. Lower heat, cover skillet and simmer for 5 minutes.
When dry, add another cup of broth. Stir chicken meat and carrot mixture and
wood ear mushrooms into the noodles.

.Cover
and simmer for another 5 minutes. Test noodles for doneness. Add more stock
and simmer longer, if necessary. When sotanghon is tender and all the stock
is absorbed, add green onion leaves and cilantro, adjust seasoning with salt
and pepper. Stir for a few minutes until the green onion leaves are slightly
wilted. Serve hot.